LAS VEGAS, NV—The Erotic Heritage Museum, which since 2008 has been dedicated to providing the public with a history of erotica around the world, had one of its murals vandalized last week. The mural, painted by a previous student and staffer of the EHM, was a recreation of Michelangelo’s classic “Leda and the Swan” painting and was one of the most beloved pieces the museum displayed.
"We were devastated to find one of our most treasured murals had been so viciously defaced,” Dr. Victoria Hartmann, director or the Erotic Heritage Museum, said in a statement released today. “None of us here can understand why someone in our neighborhood would ruin such a beautiful piece of art; art that is meant only to improve our community landscape. Destructive acts such as this leave all of us here at the museum so saddened.”
Dr. Victoria and her staff immediately reached out to restoration experts hoping to save the mural, but learned that the piece, located on the northside of the building, was not repairable. This is unfortunately not the first time the Erotic Heritage Museum, sitting a block off the famous Las Vegas Strip and in the shadow of the Trump International Hotel, was vandalized. Last year a man managed to destroy the museum’s entire electrical system. Fortunately, the perpetrator was caught, arrested, and went to prison. And unlike the mural, the museum’s electrical system could be fixed.
The Erotic Heritage Museum houses more than 24,000 square feet of permanent and featured exhibits, championing the wonders of erotic imagination, as depicted through artistic expressions of sex and love. The museum's ethos is that sexual pleasure and its depiction are natural aspects of the human experience and that such celebrations of individual human sexuality (i.e., pleasure) must be made available to all, regardless of gender, race, or belief. With so much of global erotic heritage undervalued, criticized, or even lost over time, the EHM is dedicated to the preservation of as much erotic heritage as is possible to display.
The EHM’s second floor hosts a gallery space of erotic artifacts and artwork, some stretching back centuries. Proudly displaying statuary, "pillow books," sketches, paintings and sculpture, these pieces alone make the museum a jewel of erotic expression through the arts. Rotating and permanent exhibitions on matters of sexual and culture import, only add to make Dr. Hartmann and her staff stewards of a massive collection unique to all the world.
“We will grieve the loss of this part of the museum and its history," Dr. Hartmann added.
The Erotic Heritage Museum is located at 3275 Sammy Davis Junior Dr, in Las Vegas. For more information, visit EroticMuseumVegas.com or call 702-794-4000.
